Love and War
by Veterization
Summary: Akihiko/Minato oneshot. All is fair in love and war and this is a little bit of both. In which, through a handful of months, Akihiko and Minato find each other. Spoilers for entire game!


Disclaimer: I do not own _Persona 3_.

**Love and War**

O O O O O

It's a battle with a particularly resilient Black Raven swinging its lantern and screeching while its feathery wings bat and flutter against the air as it dodges one of Junpei's slashes when Akihiko first touches you.

You're on the floor, the Raven's eyes on you as if the critical hit you just sustained is about to be repeated, when Akihiko gets in the way and extends his gloved hand to you. The Raven's still watching you, wings bristling in anticipation for you to get up so it can dig its beak into your shoulder blade and sink you back down to the floor, but your eyes are focused on the outstretched palm waiting expectantly for you to take it and lift yourself off the floor glittering with the remnants of coppery blood.

Helping each other regain stances is, as a general observation, not something that the S.E.E.S. members are particularly notorious for. When Yukari falls unconscious with a shriek after being knocked to the ground by the ferocious claws of a Maya, not even Mitsuru, merely watching the gruesome scene over intercom without being hampered by the constant need for concentration, expresses a hefty amount of concern. When Junpei's hat gets tipped off his head after he goes careening down onto the floor, Akihiko steps in and battles the Shadow for himself. It's a system of self-preservation, survival of the fittest, not partnership and all for one and one for all. So when you catch the sight of Akihiko's eyes, fierce and blazing and waiting for you to seize his hand to pull yourself up instead of declining the superfluous proposal to clamber to your feet without extra help, you know it's strange.

Behind you, Yukari aims her bow and shoots her arrow. It sinks in the flesh of the Raven so it screeches and disappears into a powdery dust. You can make out Junpei's playful jabs in Yukari's direction concerning her aim while Yukari indignantly shushes any of his teases. Akihiko still hasn't moved in front of you. You let your eyes meet his intense gray ones once more and twine your fingers into his.

Your hand is sweaty and dripping from the puddle of blood you fell into, slippery against the smooth leather of Akihiko's glove, so he grips onto you enough to bruise your fingers and hoists you up. His other hand pockets his Evoker so he can wrap his free fingers around your forearm and touch the rumpled sleeve there. It's the most you've ever touched Akihiko since you've arrived at the dorm and the closest you've ever stood to him, and you realize that aside from the distant, almost cold exterior of the title Boxing Champion that Akihiko uses as a sturdy shield everywhere he goes, Akihiko is warm. His hands are warm, his eyes are warm, and as you stand next to him, the chill of Tartarus ephemerally trickles down your shoes out of your toes and drains into floor.

"Don't overdo it," he says, his eyes not leaving yours. Your hand is still in his. By this point you'd be brushing your pants free of dirt and beckoning your team over to instigate a battle with another lurking Shadow. You're still on the same spot, the only evidence of a war ever thundering through being the vaporous dust shimmering on the floor in the wake of the monster they fought. Akihiko pulls his leathery glove out of your grip and manages the slightest tugs of his lips upward. It's a smile, a _keep going_smile, a grin that reassures doubts you didn't know you had.

You realize then, as your eyes tear away from each other with the reluctance of sticky bits of toffee being pulled apart, that Akihiko cares about you, in a manner that is completely polarized from the sturdy teamwork he's developed with Mitsuru since his adolescence and the brotherly affection he carries around with him like a collection of fond memories for Shinjiro. He cares the same way that you notice Yukari caring when her jealousy flourishes in the face of girls approaching you during lunch to talk. He cares how boys aren't supposed to care. He cares in the way that blossoms a seed of young curiosity into a bizarre case of rampant love.

_Well_, you think, pushing your Evoker into the pocket of your pants and grabbing hold of your sword, slippery from sweat, before trudging onward through the dark hallway of Tartarus' hallway, _all is fair in love and war and this is a little bit of both._

O O O O O

It's during the spring festival when you realize that Akihiko is capable of very green, green envy.

It's evening by the time you arrive. Yukari is your companion, clad in a pretty yukata that clings to her in a way that flatters her every curve. She's a girl who's nice to look at and is easy to appreciate from a distance, if Junpei's forward advances and constant attempts to lure her into lingerie by flattering her cleavage in the lewdest manner possible are any indication of how Yukari would act to any forms of appreciation sans the comfortable distance. But she's attractive, and pleasant to converse with when she doesn't feel accosted by vulgar comments or shifty situations, and from the way her hand keeps twitching and her wrist keeps brushing against his, you're starting to read her signs and convey them as blatant hints.

You're aware, however, that it's not something that will ever happen. It's not a blind loyalty to the team to keep any intimate liaisons threatening to break the group's strategic sense of teamwork and camaraderie at bay. If anything, it's the fact that Yukari doesn't interest you. She smells of sweet sugared tea on an autumn night and has soft, gentle skin that would be nice to touch were you to hold her hand or stroke her cheek. She is, however, hardly your type, and all the things that make her perfect are all the things that determine this.

Still, you're friends, and that's what you've come to the festival as. Yukari is finishing her last mouthful of takoyaki and searching the area for a glimpse of one of her friends from archery club when the noticeable flash of bright red hair flits across your vision and through the steadily darkening sky, you catch sight of Akihiko and Mitsuru perusing the stands of the festival together.

They see you before you can call out in greeting. Akihiko perks up like he's a dog who's heard the dinner bell and nudges Mitsuru. She sees the two of you, smiles elegantly, and wanders over with Akihiko in the lead.

"You came to the festival," he says. His eyes aren't on you, or even Misturu, or Yukari. They're focused where your wrists are touching with hers, the barest of skin pressed together. Her small fingers are twitching again, as if itching to slip her hand into the strong grasp of your own and initiate the possessive gesture for you, but they refrain from any temptations they may be mulling over. Her hand stays limp at her side, but Akihiko notices it nonetheless.

"It's prepared well, isn't it?" Mitsuru says, and Yukari swallows down on her mouthful of fried octopus before she nods her head, "It's a shame that more people didn't come."

"Did you two come together?" Akihiko interjects. Yukari blushes crimson, and you sense that she's waiting for you to confirm the affirmative, hinting at the implication that they purposely went to the festival together with undertones of affection lacing the declaration. You catch Akihiko's eye, which despite its usual manner of hard staring, is uncharacteristically failing to find purchase on anyone's faces, jumping from Yukari's hand and the lack of inches between yours and hers to her bright blush noticeable even in the moonlight and dim illumination from the lanterns hanging from nearby stands drifting smells of fresh tonkatsu over to the group. You give the boy a total of ten seconds to speak up to explain the hostility in his inquiries, and when you realize that what you're witnessing rearing its ugly head in front of you is a blatant outbreak of _envy_, you have the mad urge to grab Akihiko's face, and after delivering a hefty shake in the hopes of returning logic to his rattled brain, kiss him stupid.

You nod and pull your hand away from the close proximity of Yukari's, wrapping it instead around the cord stemming from the headphones around your neck. Akihiko stops burning holes in Yukari's palm and pushes his lips into a pallid line. The girls seem blissfully unaware of the tension lingering amidst the festival fun, Yukari's blush still present as she waits for you to expound on the background of their joint appearance at the festival where all roads lead to 'date', and Mitsuru entirely unaware of Akihiko's formidable discomfort. You feel the tension, and you can see the green cloud of fog crowding the crown of Akihiko's head.

"Well," Akihiko says, voice strangely deep and jaw rather set, "tomorrow we should probably get to work and go to Tartarus again."

"Akihiko's right," Mitsuru says, fixing them both with a look of concentrated determination, as if festivals are but mere small pleasantries that disrupt the progress made in stopping the Shadows if they occur too frequently, "We have to focus as well."

Akihiko takes this moment to emphasize Mitsuru's statement with a firm stare that lingers unnecessarily on Yukari with eyes dark enough to flash with the wrath of lightning. You hear her shuffle closer to you, as if searching out consolation for Akihiko's verbal warning, and for a moment, you consider indulging in her desire to seek comfort since she's clueless as to why she's targeted with her mentor's silent aggression, if only to see Akihiko bristle at the action. You decide humor is something to hunt for during a situation with less weight and less belligerent, heated glares from skilled boxers, and with a certain amount of tact secured, you refrain from grabbing Yukari's hand twitching against your hipbone once more.

"We're focused on the Shadows!" Yukari stutters out, and you catch Akihiko's flaring eyes with an indulgent smile and nod in affirmation. You glance at Yukari again as her embarrassment overrules her yearning to romantically entice you into admitting that your stroll through the festival is an amorous endeavor and try to find her appeal once more. You see it; you see it glaring at you with heterosexual neon signs pointing to her sizable chest, her tasteful make-up, her shiny hair. You know why the boys at school talk about her in the halls and attempt to gather up the dredges of romantic inclinations mingling in the musty corners of their brains to persuade her into spending a weekend together. You understand why, but you also know that that's where it ends for you. Your heart isn't beating out a staccato rhythm against your ribcage at the sight of her smile and your fingertips don't get sweaty at the sound of her laugh.

You look over at Akihiko, and catch sight of a hill of goose bumps on his arm even though a chilly breeze is absent from the evening. You want to trace them like a connect-the-dot painting or count them all like a popcorn ceiling until you've memorized his body. You wonder if you'd be allowed.

Akihiko's gaze meets yours, finally standing still long enough to share a thought, and in the back of your mind, you wonder if you're thinking of the same thing. If you ever are. If he has the same dreams about you or the same rushes of adrenaline at the sight of your face, the epitome of determination, when you're delivering merciless destruction to a Shadow with no trace of it left behind. You look at him and think _you know I want you and all of your scars_, because entertaining the idea of thinking this of Yukari is outright ludicrous. You stare at him, think harder, and wonder if he knows. Wonder if he cares. He matches your unwavering gaze with his own and the left side of his mouth twitches in what could have been a smile.

O O O O O

It's during the typhoon that sweeps the city when Akihiko first touches you with purpose.

You remember the walk home, stormy, windy, and everything a hurricane thrill film should aspire to be, complete with ominous clouds packed together in bunches of green shaped suspiciously like deathly omens that Mr. Edogawa taught the class to recognize during his lecture on ancient magic. Students barreled home on windswept bicycles and lost control of their umbrellas desperately attempting to wrangle themselves free of their sopping palms to fly in the breeze. You remember coming home to the dorm in the state of a waterlogged boot thrown into a lake as fish bait, the tips of your hair curling into your cheeks and dripping onto the carpet beneath you. You could have wrung out your jacket that night, but you didn't. You listened to Junpei pray that the weather cancelled school and Mitsuru mention yet again that the festival would have to be put to an unfortunate cease thanks to the storm.

And now you're lying in your bed, your clothes hung up by the shower rungs in the fourth floor bathroom. If you close your eyes, you can make out the dripping of the rainwater from the fabric of your jacket onto the shower tiles and into the drain, but it's not until you blink away the blur of your brain that you realize that instead of steady drips, your ears are ringing like a hum of an engine. Your sheets are up to your neck but your flesh is still clammy, your toes numb and your hair damp and pooled out on the moistened pillow beneath you. You're dry by now, but you still feel wet, wet and chilled and sodden to the core of your bones.

You realize then that any bonus weekend you may have earned thanks to the natural disaster may very well be wasted on fighting off pneumonia germs instead of fighting Shadows crawling the floors of Tartarus. You burrow into your sheets, freezing kneecaps brushing together, and let your eyelids flutter closed, eyelashes bound together by loitering rainwater.

The nap, however, is short-lived as far as you can tell, which frankly, you can't. You can make out the steady sound of rainwater battering against and quivering through the foundation of the dorm, topped off with the histrionic sound of whistling wind whipping the walls, but despite the reaffirmed fact that the typhoon is far from over, you can infer little else about the present.

The shadows in the room have darkled since you first slid into bed, but as far as your groggy brain can surmise, hours to days to even the merest of minutes have passed. There's a clock ticking on the nightstand, but the hands are blurry and fade into the shadows eclipsing it when you try to make out their locations. It's not until you feel the slight rustle of sheets when you realize that someone's sitting on the bottom of your bed.

The distinguishable silhouette of a boy is perched on the edge of your bedspread. You trace his outline, your eyes deciphering through the darkness two arms and a tuft of silver hair. The boy on the bottom of your bed slides higher up the mattress and feels your forehead with his palm. His fingers feel unnaturally cold to you, like thin strips of ice, but it's a cool relief to the sweltering heat of your face. You arch into his hand and he pulls his fingers away.

"You're burning up," a gruff voice says, and you can sense Akihiko before you can hear him. Your hand, suddenly slithered out from the protection of the covers, reaches for solidity and lands on the soft, worn fabric of Akihiko's vest, right where it furls up at his stomach. You open your mouth to speak, but you're tired, tired even to your eyes, which succumb to the allures of the shadows tempting you to slip back into the darkness of slumber. Still, you want to speak and part your lips to try once more, your fingers fumbling for purchase to dig your nails into the material of Akihiko's shirt, but a cool hand curls around your shoulder and squeezes, so you stop.

"Don't get up," says Akihiko. His thumb is brushing over your collar. You get a whiff of the scent that you've grown to associate Akihiko with, the polished leather of boxing gloves and the battered, almost tangible odor of determination. He shifts on the mattress and the same scent wafts over to your placid nostrils. "You've probably caught something. Just sleep it off."

Your head feels heavy against the pillows, too heavy to even consider lifting, and Akihiko's words, sounding more reasonable by the second, are permitting the ideal of letting the bed keep you captive for a handful more of hours. The covers feel hot and smooth on your skin and Akihiko's vest is wooly in your fingertips. You clench on, feebly at best, sleep already tugging at your eyelids, because you want Akihiko to stay. There's an amused chuckle and a familiar hand covering your own before you realize that you've managed to nonverbally whine for the boy to remain with you.

"Just get some rest."

You murmur something, something you won't remember saying when you reemerge from your room days after the typhoon sweeps its way through the city and is finally sated enough to depart and the vestiges of the infection you caught after being stuck in the sheets of sleet trickles away. Akihiko chuckles, a warm chuckle that only soothes your brain, waterlogged with the temptation of sleep, even further. The hand on your shoulder is still there, thumb tracing indistinguishable patterns on the sliver of your skin exposed from the collar of your shirt. His other hand grabs hold of your sheets and tucks them around your arms until you're hermetically cocooned into your bed like a bat sheltered by the security of its wings. Your eyes are closed, but you hardly remember closing them. A sneeze and the bubbles of a raspy throat are crawling up your esophagus, tickling your senses, but Akihiko shifting on your bed seems to distract the stirrings of your sickness.

You feel his lips on your forehead before you can process his actions and subconsciously lean into it. It's a motherly kiss that's warm and tingly and comforting in all the ways a mother isn't. Akihiko's lips, slightly dry and parted, are boyish and chapped in comparison to the slimy, wet, slippery memories you have swimming in your brain of the typhoon churning outside the walls of the dorm. The kiss he presses to your forehead is short and sweet and lulls any remaining concerns still fighting for awareness before you plummet to a deep sleep tugging at your mind and limbs to an abrupt cease. You want to tell him to stay with you, kiss you again on the forehead, or maybe the nose or your bottom lip, but your mouth still refuses to exert the effort to open. Your nose is rewarded with yet another whiff of clean leather and with a bounce of the mattress, the lump dipping your bed down to a sag is lifted and Akihiko gets to his feet.

"I'll ask Shinji to make you some soup later for when you wake up," he says, his voice no longer close and lingering by your cheek, but whispering by the door. The last thing you feel before you drift away from consciousness is the loitering ghost of a mouth's pressure on the hot flesh of your forehead.

O O O O O

It's in Kyoto when Akihiko first kisses you.

You're standing, frozen, in the depths of the hot springs, tucked into the safety of the nook of the rocks, Junpei and Ryoji whispering furiously behind you, most presumably sharing wills and death wishes, while you listen for the faraway sounds of Yukari and Fuuka hunting the waters for wayward boys. You're quivering, not out of lack of warmth, as the hot spring's tendrils of steam crawl up to moisten your cheeks and curl up your nostrils, but out of adrenaline alone. You tuck yourself against the rock, peering over it so only a fraction of your eyelashes appear over the boulders, looking for a flash of Mitsuru's scarlet hair or listening for the rustling of water making tides as Aigis or Fuuka wade through in search of the offending men invading on their feminine privacy.

Akihiko jabs Junpei in the ribs when his bemoaning heightens in volume and threatens to blow their already shaky, hardly discreet cover. Ryoji's hair is still dripping in his face from when Junpei pushed him underwater and shook him like a sopping shirt hanging out to dry. He looks like a cat caught as a victim in rain but doesn't utter a word as his hair, lost of any shape, trickles down his forehead, only sharing dark looks with Junpei from time to time as if sharing confirmation of the doom of this situation mollifies either of them. Next to you, Akihiko is mirroring a ghost's hue, pallid and washed free of any color, eyes wide as tree trunks as he scans the area for Mitsuru's head.

There is water, or sweat, on Akihiko's back. It furls over his shoulders, trickles down his neck, and trickles all the way down into a mist down the muscles tensed on his back as he arches over the rock in search of the girls hunting down their concealment, the water rippling around his hips as he hoists himself further up the boulder to check for lingering heads of hair spying for the presence of perverted boys. If the situation would be any less frightening and Ryoji and Junpei weren't whimpering in the anticipation of Mitsuru's incensed, shrieking face brandishing execution weapons, you know you'd be feeling something opposite of trepidation and fear right now.

It'd be the same feeling you get late at night, when you wake up with your sheets sticky and your thighs crusting with a layer of your come that you rub off under the steam of your morning shower. The same sensation that stirs in your midsection when your mind wanders in class or when you catch Akihiko's eye in the middle of the fight with a tenacious Shadow, the tent in your pants from the hum of adrenaline fueling your hardly ever satiated hormones when you pick him off from the floor and amble through Tartarus with him by your side. Except now, it would almost be allowed. It wouldn't be the middle of Gekkoukan High during lunch period or when your blood is pumping south and churning in your veins in Tartarus, it's in a hot springs in Kyoto with the steam heating up your body as well as sweaty sheets wrapped around your midsection on a muggy summer day would.

Akihiko turns around, practically giddy with relief when faintly, they overhear the girls' uneasy acceptance that they are alone in the hot springs and abortion of the mission to search out any presences of testosterone. You and him grin at each other like little children hiding under the porch clever enough to outsmart the mother who comes looking for her kids to come inside before dark and are about to turn on Ryoji and Junpei to share the good news when you realize that the two of them are resembling the hues of ripe strawberries and are close to collapsing underneath the clouds of steam and swimming back to the edge.

It's then when the atmosphere officially changes from one of terror and panic to one of magnetic want.

It's almost tangible by the time the smiles die down and you and Akihiko share looks with enough charged undercurrents to grant power to an entire rural town in Japan. The air isn't stifling anymore and the heat isn't roasting away their hydration, instead it's all morphed into tendrils of steam packed with unspoken ardency that only seems to mount with every passing second.

You reach for each other like blind men in a windstorm, hands plunging under the line of water and resting on each other's hips, hot and smooth under the water, soft like silk gloves. The water intensifies his touch on your skin tenfold, fingers wrapping around your hipbones and suddenly, lips mouthing over your jaw. His bandage, stuck on the side of his forehead, brushes against your cheek, the tip of his nose grazing over the path he makes with his wet lips, and his fingers, trembling, are running up the small of your back to where the natural groove of your skin sets in, and before you can comprehend the situation, your mouths are aligned and your breaths are in tandem and you're kissing.

It's unlike anything you've heard students whispering over in the hallways of Gekkoukan or seen on the romantic comedies that sometimes play into the night in the dormitory after the news are over. You've heard that kissing is the stuff of teenage daydreams, realistic magic, and ignites proverbial fireworks on lips, male and female alike. Right now, you feel more like you are the firework, eruptions of color and explosions of light and all of the extraneous necessities that come with the celebration and shebang of fireworks alive inside of you. There is something very like a firework in the way Akihiko kisses, desperate and eager, like he's seconds away from his fuse that will careen him into the sky. Behind your eyes, you see sparks, and your hands find watery purchase on the slick skin of Akihiko's cheeks.

You realize then that this is your first kiss that Akihiko's stolen from you, with no chance of returning it with a full refund and guaranteed restored innocence, but you don't mind. You don't mind that he's not a soft girl with hair akin to shiny commercial models or long, lean legs accentuated by the fluttering of a short skirt. You don't mind that he's pushy, that his mouth is rubbing against yours with the perfect blend of hot water, sweat, and saliva and he's not yielding to his leader. You don't mind that the corners of his fingernails are digging crescent marks into your back or that his nose is bumping against yours like umbrellas colliding in a thunderstorm.

It's a thunderstorm, and you are the fireworks sizzling in it. Every nerve situated in your body, whether dormant or neglected or sensitive, is alit right now, the very tips of your toes numb to the rush of blood streaming through your veins with a sense of adrenaline entirely different from the one you receive after every slash you send through a dissipating Shadow accepting defeat.

Akihiko smells just like he did months ago, when he ducked down and flitted his lips against your forehead, and even in your nasally, bacteria haze, you caught a scent entirely associated with things that make Akihiko who he is: polished leather, last night's ramen, and now, the lingering odor of heat, not just from the hot spring, but from Akihiko himself, tangible like the aroma of burnt sugar too hot to touch. You wonder, then, if he tastes the same, and what he'll taste like when another handful of months will have passed, and most importantly, if you'll know.

He pulls back, warm whimpers shared between the gaps of your lips, the separation only existing as a plea for oxygen before your propinquity withers down to nothing once again and your mouth nudges his. You're not sure who instigates, who initiates, who pushes any more, but it's certain that all of it is too good to be stopped. There's some things, you realize, that aren't to be questioned, but rather taken in wordless appreciation, whether it be the power of wielding a Persona or kissing Akihiko Sanada for no reason but pure instinct in the middle of a steamy nook of a hot spring.

Somehow, all of it is wet, messy, and amazing all at the same time. Your lips are aligned for your tongues to brush over supple closed mouths, noses flattened against each other and foreheads tipped together every time you pull back to suck in a desperate inhale. It's not just one kiss anymore, but many, a myriad of them stolen and swapped and shared while your hands grip onto the prominent bone of Akihiko's jaw. Your thumb brushes under his eyes where his eyelashes lick over his cheeks and your index finger brushes the moist material of Akihiko's bandage. He arches into your touch, every inch of his skin pressed into yours with no room for air to slip through. You know that never from this point on will you not remember the sensation of Akihiko's chest, layered with a sheen of moisture and residual steam, against yours, or the irresistible sound of the whimpers that escape his throat to be silenced on your lips. His fingerprints, like stamps, are pressed onto your flesh for what you know will be an eternity, and your own fingers ache to study Akihiko's body with the same fervor, like tracing a map or memorizing a blueprint.

When you pull away from each other with the reluctance of sticky batter to a pan, hands still stroking wrists and hipbones underneath the swirl of steam-fogged water, you realize that Akihiko is smiling. Straight at you. One thousand watts packed into a mouth tugged upward at the ends. Lips still shining from when your tongue flitted over them. You lick your own lips and realize that you're tasting Akihiko. It's silly, the epitome of the teenage hormonal outburst ending in moans and gropes, completely uncontrollable and unexplainable when the aftermaths are analyzed, but somehow, it makes you want to grin. From the look of Akihiko's face, he's having trouble keeping the smile on his own face at bay.

You know that you want to kiss Akihiko more. Again, and again, and again, until you've lost count and you're sharing DNA. There are many things that you want to do, so many that there doesn't seem to be enough time. Akihiko's body language is a dialect you want to be fluent in and his vertebrae rolling down his spine and goosebumps high on his flesh in the chilly evenings are parts of his body you want to count fastidiously.

You feel mad and stupid, but in all the right ways. You feel like you're in love.

O O O O O

It's Christmas Eve when you and Akihiko first hold hands.

It's the silliest thing either of you would ever be caught doing. Akihiko isn't the hand-holding type, nor is he the type to swell with romantic gestures or blow kisses over ramen bowls, but you aren't exactly that type either. You have a few girls that you know hope you are. Yukari still shuffles closer to you in the hopes of finding solace in proximity when your team faces a formidable guardian Shadow. Aigis seeks to protect you so diligently it's a wonder she doesn't latch onto your entire body like a bundle of seaweed wrapped around an ankle as a shield at a constant basis over the more typical hand-holding. But you don't. You don't do any of that stuff. You keep your hands to yourself the same way Akihiko does, so when suddenly, you don't anymore, you're smart enough to admit that something's changed.

He matters to you, too. You're not just the new kid with a miraculous set of powers and unanimously assigned leadership skills anymore. You're part of the team, part of S.E.E.S., and part of Akihiko's life. And now, you're here hip to hip and winter jackets wrapped around your torsos as you brave the chill of the outdoors on Christmas Eve.

Yukari had asked you this morning if you were doing anything for Christmas Eve, eyes uncharacteristically shy and her voice brimming with unbridled hope before lunchtime came to a close. You said no, and now, you're here at Paulownia Mall with a boy instead of a pretty girl wrapped in a winter shawl.

You had been worried at first that Akihiko would have declined any suggestions you may have had at spending Christmas Eve together with an inevitable excuse of the necessity for constant training lingering nearby or that the idea of a public outing would make him uncomfortable. But here you are together, at the mall, two steps in when Akihiko stops and lets out a low exhale of fascination.

The lights are amazing. They're strung up from each shop, twinkling without a single broken bulb to tarnish the strings of lights like miniature fairies glowing in the night. There are small children tugging on the sleeves of their mother's jackets while pointing at the enormous tree flashing in time to the tune of soft, vague Christmas music wafting out of the coffee shop. The gargantuan tree crowned as a centerpiece in the heart of the area is glowing with a radiance that is hardly electric, but fueled by the glorious spirit of annual holiday cheer. The air is icy and burns your cheek like a blade, but the sight makes you feel warm in your very core like apple cider steaming down your throat.

You look over at Akihiko. He's smiling. It's the kind of smile people get when they're told they're good at something or that there are presents under the Christmas tree. The lights are licking up his cheeks, illuminating his face with a white glow as brilliant as freshly laid snow. You've never seen him look so awed, so distracted from the cult posters littered on the floor and whatever conundrum tomorrow will inevitably bring by something as simple as a Christmas decoration glittering on shop walls. His face loses five years of premature aging and the faint definitions of worry wrinkles just from grinning alone. His teeth catch the glow of the lights and on an impulse that you couldn't halt if you so desired, your fingers reach for his.

Your palms brush and Akihiko moves his beam from the strings of twinkling lights and hanging wreaths to you, his grin not losing any of his fervor. He looks young and beautiful and for a moment, invincible, and in a surge of mutual affection, your fingers thread together with his as if through a temporary telepathic link, you agree to tune out the families pointing at your linked hands and the Gekkoukan students whispering about the way you catch each other's eyes.

You don't stuff your intertwined hands into one of your pockets and you don't sandwich them between your bodies as concealment. You hold them out in the open, squeezing away any traces of cold the chilly, winter evening air is whipping against your clothes and into your skin. You brush your thumb over the back of his knuckles and Akihiko runs his finger down the length of your thumb. His hands aren't soft or creamy in complexion like Yukari's, nor are they adorned with pretty, manicured fingernails that Mitsuru meticulously maintains. They're rough, boyish, set with strong knuckles and short fingernails. There's a scar, white and slashed down the backside of Akihiko's palm, and when you run your fingers over it, it's puckered out the rest of his skin. You want to ask him where it came from. He wants to know how many scars he has smattered over his entire body and trace them so slowly, it would take you all afternoon. You realize then that you have a lot of questions for him, endless amounts of inquiries from his childhood at the orphanage, to his ardency for boxing, to what can opener he had to scrape his hand against to achieve such a scar on his knuckles. You don't have enough time to ask him everything you want answers to. The ticking of the time bomb burdened on your shoulders is palpable, pulsating through your heartbeat and your veins and buzzing in your ear. You squeeze Akihiko's hand harder as a shiver racks your bones and he squeezes back, like he understands.

The war, you realize, is winning over love.

O O O O O

It's the rise of the New Year when you and Akihiko are alone in the dormitory.

The hours of the night trickled away and dwindled into morning after Ryoji's departing, the celebration of accomplishments, mistakes, and memories that traditionally travels alongside a New Year's Eve night neglected in favor of rumination for the entire group. It's not until you're staring out the nearest window, chin propped up on your hand on the table, that you realize that the gray light of the morning is overwhelming the darkness of the ghastly hours of nighttime and that the past year has officially simmered to its end.

Akihiko is sitting in the chair next to you at the side of the table, eyes on you when your gaze turns to him. There's a chill in the air mirroring the ice of a typical January morning found outdoors and somehow, Akihiko seems to have fallen prey to it. His jacket seems too flimsy, his face too pale, his scarf too small and hanging without life from his neck. His face is worn like a child's shoe scuffed at the soles, ten years worth of age and weight burdened on his shoulders that should be waiting to be gained in future years. You realize then, with your eyes on Akihiko's silly, small scarf, that the future is not tangible. In a universe where time is linear, stretching along the mind's eye until it disappears as a dot in the horizon, you know that the lines you're skating on are shortening. You catch Akihiko's gray gaze and feel it stick like toffee, emotional superglue linking your gaze together to scare all of your fears. You know that Akihiko would never speak his fright aloud, but you know it's there. You fingers twitch to grab his on your knee, but you don't divulge in that yearning.

"I guess it's past midnight," Akihiko says, "Happy New Year."

You nod, you smile, your body fulfills all of the polite courtesies necessary to be satisfied after such a statement. But behind the etiquette, you know it's a statement far less hollow than it seems. This year, making it through, finding the edge of survival, hoisting up the sword of glory and triumph and the odds to play out in favor of sheer luck and mercy, staying side by side, hand to hand, it's everything. To keep it merely _happy_seems almost trivial when the formidable task of maintaining life is looming nearby, ever closer.

So you say the same. You tell him to have a good year, and he gets it, he always does. He shifts on his chair, reaches out to grab your chin in two fingers, two callused, tender fingertips with flesh mingling with the scent of leather, and strokes his thumb over your jaw. He has exactly the hands a boxer should have, with a strong hold and rough skin, but it all feels smooth to you. Your chin sags into his touch, seeking the solace, and when you lean into his hand you notice the hint of evening stubble shadowed on Akihiko's face and a red scratch bright enough to mark the signal of recent injury by his ear where the hair tucks into his face.

His free hand finds yours without you remember it doing so, but it's warm and right to have your palm cocooned in his. Your fingers are entwined at the crooks like you've done this hundreds of times, like this is lover's routine and habit for both of you, like his touch is the only thing that makes sense to you in the middle of an abrupt apocalypse in a town in Japan. You have studies to prepare for, equipment to earn, and muscles to define, but with your hand in his, you focus on his touch and the rest fades into a world you can confront at your will without time as a hindrance.

For the first time since you've heard that the end of the world is nigh and loitering over your shoulders, you feel the pressure of a proverbial ticking clock inching toward a fuse ready to fuel the bomb of the end of time. Before, it's been a what if, a concern to worry about in the distance, and now, staring into Akihiko's face, you realize that it's running right behind you.

_No one can escape time_, Pharos had said, and you're starting to wish you could. You wish you could steal away a pocket of time, crawl into a wormhole to another dimension, and stare at the earth so far away with Akihiko's cheek and strong jaw pressed against yours.

But the wormhole fades, as do the other dimensions, and the clock reemerges, hands flying and ticking pounding in your ear, and you focus on the face in front of you. It feels like you're wearing your heart outside of your body, your ribcage protecting nothing but empty, whistling air, the palpitating flesh of your heart numb with the cold air of a winter's day.

"We'll make it," says Akihiko, and you almost believe him, "it's a New Year, isn't it?"

He leans forward, breath warm and soothing on your cheek, the fingers on your chin sliding over to the nape of your neck to mingle with the bristles of your hair where it falls down onto his fingers. You arch into his touch like a famished man dipping into the creek, your forehead finding support against the sturdiness of Akihiko's, noses side by side like friends at the same dinner table. He breathes in, slowly, and exhales just as deliberately, the tension leaving his body like wires are charging him out all the way through to his fingertips, until he finds it okay to lean in and push your lips together.

Your bottom lip finds purchase on his mouth and for one innocent moment, you're melded together whispering all of the _Happy New Years_you'll ever need to each other until your kiss breaks apart and your fingers find the fabric of his pants gathering at his kneecap.

You know then that even the hardest of wars find their armistice days, and the ticking in your ear gets louder.

O O O O O

It's the thirtieth of January when you and Akihiko first have sex.

You don't know how it happens, but then again, you suppose that's the magic of it. Had it been planned, Akihiko would have been sweaty and awkward miles before any touching had begun. You operate not on agreements and verbalized feelings, but on pure emotion and instinct, and that's how you find yourself tumbled in each other's limbs and sheets in the darkness of Akihiko's room with your mouths locked and your clothes scattered on the floor in a stream of haphazard undressing.

He holds onto you like you're the only warm thing his sweaty hands manage to have purchase on, clutching ferociously enough to leave crescent fingernail marks deep as tattoo ink in your skin as if an invisible force stronger than gravity is threatening to pull him back from you. His breath is hot in your neck, gusts of damp heat, moist and warm like the exhaust of a bus, dampening your neck and somehow tingling the beads of sweat out of the glands of your skin across your entire body to life. There is not a single part of your body that is not trembling, that isn't pressed up against Akihiko's bare legs, arms, and torso, that isn't covered in a sheen of hot, much too hot sweat tangible on your body like an extra layer of clothing. You're too warm, your heart is beating past its speedometer needle, and your hands don't seem to be touching enough flesh fast enough.

The feeling of Akihiko's body, equally hot, just as damp, is addictive. Your hand slides to the bare globes of his rear and up to the small of his back, settling into the groove of soft skin there. The feel of Akihiko's shoulder bones working under your touch as he leaves suckling kisses at your neck, the touch of the bristly hairs stemming from the nape of Akihiko's neck, and the taste of the salty flesh dipped into the crook of his neck where his jugular leads up to his chin. Every bit of him is a drug, a messy drug that you can't comprehend your lust for. Every time you touch the boy, it's hot like a brand. Too hot. Too much.

The hot line of Akihiko's length is nestled into your hip, leaking onto your thigh and rubbing against your erection with delicious amounts of friction every time he readjusts on your hips. Each time, he quivers and you gasp, foreheads pressed together and dicks aligned with just the right angle for a thrust and a buck upward that triples the noises bubbling from your throat. Your legs are wrapped around his waist, hooked together at the ankle, shaft dripping with precome onto your stomach and only growing harder with fresh bursts of blood headed southward every time you hear Akihiko's sharp inhale and breathy moan right onto your eardrum.

You can't decide where to put your hands anymore, so you tangle one palm into the short strands of hair at the base of Akihiko's scalp, the fingers on your right hand cupping his jaw where the slightest amount of stubble is growing, pulling his cheek to rub against yours and your mouths to meet. He whimpers in your mouth, tongue slipping past the seam of your lips to tangle with yours, clutching on desperately, hungry for your touch and your taste as if with every passing second, his heart is decomposing. You kiss him harder, harder than he kisses you, keeping him alive with your touch as he pulls back from your lips and nudges the tip of his nose against yours. Your foreheads bump, slippery with beads of sweat, and Akihiko's kisses you like it's a promise that he'll take care of you.

You shiver in his grip as his hand roams down from the column of your neck past the expanse of your torso and nestles in the groove of your inner thigh. You're shaking, legs numb and blood rushing at one hundred miles per hour through every vein in your body. Your erection is pressed up into his stomach, begging for relief, a sign Akihiko telepathically picks up on. He kisses you again, murmuring all the while, before rubbing his thumb over the slit of your length and wrapping his fingers around to stroke you. He's teasing, tempting little brushes with the tip of his thumb and tantalizingly slow pumps of his warm palm making your buck into his downward strokes. It's too much, too hot, too good, and you know that you won't be done until Akihiko lets you be.

He kisses you as his hand slips from your cock to slither in between the crook of your ass, fingertip finding your entrance and rubbing in a pattern that makes you arch against his sweaty body and claw at his back. He shushes you, lips wet and hot like electricity against the shell of your ear, and when he breaches the furled ring of muscle, tight in anticipation and shooting watts of adrenaline to tickle your fingers and only make you harder and pleading for the boy above you, you clutch at him harder and let him.

He rubs at you, in and out, one finger and two, until the ache disperses and dribbles into the loitering promise of pleasure. Your breath is shallow and barely able to stutter up your throat, trapped in your lungs and hitching back with every push of Akihiko's fingers past your hole. You catch Akihiko's eyes, unblinking and awed, as if he's staring down at the best thing he's ever held in his arms, dilated with lust and wet, wet with something that when you blink past the blur of ardency coursing through your body, you realize are tears brimming in his eyelids. You kiss at his cheekbones and grip his hips harder, leaving bruises dark enough to rival the river of marks down your neck.

You kiss him again and again, brushes of your lower lip down his jaw, his forehead, the soft spot under his ear and the supple flesh of his lips. He shakes in your arms with the intensity of it all and your hands squeeze reassurances onto his hipbones until he ducks his face into your neck and pulls his fingers from your entrance.

When he slides into you, it's slow and burns with a delicious blend of pain, stretch, and heat all at once. With every inch he's in, he sucks at the sensitive, red spots on your neck, possessive and fastidious with all of his movements until the pain is gone. Your cock is weeping for attention and your neck is slick from Akihiko's meticulous ministrations delivered by his tongue and gentle lips, and when Akihiko pulls out of you with a whimper and teases the tip of your hole with the head of his erection before easing back in, you swallow him back inside and kiss him like it's the last time you'll get the opportunity to get a whiff of leather and taste the flavor of Akihiko's swollen lips.

He's buried deep inside you in seconds, actions going from cautious to sloppy and hot, much too _hot_for you to handle anymore. You want more, whether it be pain or pleasure or any onslaught of sensations, and you beg for it. You push and arch against him in tandem to his thrusts, eyes locked as if pulled together by strings as he slams into your body with the intensity of a crashing freight train exploding beneath your eyelids.

Akihiko looks flushed, sweaty, unsure, shaky, and quivering with the desire pouring out of the seams of his skin. You've never seen anything more breathtaking and once again, your breath is lost, leaving your lungs dry and your mouth gasping for more. The ticking and drumming in your ear has never been louder, thumping against your eardrum like a guitar bursting the speakers. You scramble against him, hands itching for purchase, but you don't have time for warning.

When you come, you shoot ropes of it with abandon. It's as if your very bones are on fire and itching for sweet release, and when it arrives, you've lost control. Akihiko moans, and you know he's lost it too when you clench around his dick and his fingernails dig into your shoulders before he cries out, mouths against your neck, and licks his wet eyelashes over the skin of your shoulder. You feel miles and decades away from the beginning of all of this, when it was nothing but locked gazes suspending time in the meeting room and innocent touches in Tartarus and flits of kisses in Kyoto, almost as if Akihiko has been here beside you, hip to hip, your whole lifetime.

Your hearts are beating steady palpitations against each other's chests, and Akihiko's still buried deep inside of you without so much as a twitch to move when he rasps out, eyelashes still wet on your neck, "I love you."

You realize when your neck is damp with your sweat and the slightest of Akihiko's tears that it's not a confession, but a goodbye.

O O O O O

You lie on Aigis' lap in the middle of a warm March day when you hear the rushing footsteps of your teammates. You hear them grinning, you hear them smiling, and best of all, you can hear Akihiko's heart pounding.

You smile. The blue sky is bright and burning even under your eyelids, half-mast and pulled by a force stronger than gravity that's lulling you a slumber more tempting than it ever was after a full night battling fatigue in Tartarus. There's a tree to the left, pink and fluttering in the wind, the rooftop to the right, and your friends' faces in front of you. Akihiko is beside you, hand in his and cocooned with the warmth of a mug of tea in the winter, and it feels right, like coming home and waking up all at the same time. You squeeze his fingers back until your knuckles are white and your blood is denied passage past your palm, but you don't mind. His face is clear next to you, gray eyes shining with a life that you've never witnessed in humans up until now. His cheek presses up next to yours, smooth and warm, and when you arch into his touch and brush your lips by his eye, he lets out a contented sigh that makes you feel like you've solved a thousand Rubix cubes, answered all of life's unanswerable questions, and stopped a million lethal apocalypses all in one night. You clutch to him, and the others laugh, warm and bright and like it wasn't three months ago that you were fighting Nyx on a rooftop with nothing but pure determination and unbeatable will. You feel loved. You feel alive.

He murmurs, again and again, that he missed you into your ear. You kiss his jaw, again and again, and he knows that you understand. You don't feel drained, but happy. Sleepy. Your earphones hum by your neck and Akihiko pulls your lower lip into his mouth and kisses you silly.

This time, it doesn't feel like goodbye. It feels like _I love you_ and _stay here with me_ and _I knew we could make it_.

The war is over, you realize, and love has won the battle.


End file.
